


dusty old places

by morgaine_has_won



Series: what might make sense [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Aromantic, Asexual Character, Gen, and dealing with old thoughts and feelings, anti-ending, anti-sasusaku, aromantic sasuke, basically a weird sexual dream, plus a hint of what his present might look like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-20 14:08:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4790129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgaine_has_won/pseuds/morgaine_has_won
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sasuke dwells on a strange dream.</p>
<p>(continuation of/ based on 'Slimy and Bored', edited 03/28/16)</p>
            </blockquote>





	dusty old places

**Author's Note:**

> this is a snippet of my personal canon for sasuke. i make a cut after 698 (with some limitations on that chapter) and basically ignore kaguya. i only really care about what might make sense with sasuke’s psychology, tbh. the little ideas here and there in this fanfic hopefully give you an impression of how i conceive of that and the manga ending in general.
> 
> one more note: sasuke’s voice in here is not absolute. his future might look a bit different than the bit he prognosticates. this also doesn’t set my views of him in stone.
> 
> // this story was edited on march 28, 2016. I've reworded some things, restructured some sentences, and added tiny changes.

Sasuke jolts awake. A body feeling numb while lungs fill with the early morning cold. Puffs of mist escape his mouth as he tries refocusing himself by concentrating on the water drops that stick to the underside of a boulder near to him. He gazes on as some of them devour the others, enlarge and fall, splattering on the ground heavily. Breathing in and out. After sitting up, there's then checking his limbs and torso with the hands; he’s done this often.

Thankfully his chakra, with its familiar hum, keeps his temperature even during nights like this, a backdrop buzz in his body. There's moisture clinging to the fabric of his clothes, though, so he performs a low-level air jutsu to reverse that. It doesn’t take much energy.

He rises up, trying to place his position, then he looks in all directions of the sky and into the heavens before setting off. An eerie greenish sun is on the rise and casts a cool light.

The pebbles of this endless stone desert crunch under the soles of sandals, and the wind is tugging at a poncho as well as hair. It has gotten slightly longer and falls over his face sometimes. Distractingly so.

It's now that he allows himself to dwell on that dream. In other periods of his life he wouldn't have.

He has begun to move, the wind dragging and softly pushing at different parts of his person, and he still feels it clinging to his bones like a numbing, unhealthy fog. Not even his breathing gets the unsettling glow out.

Usually he doesn’t care too much what his imagination comes up with while he sleeps since it’s not like he has influence on that, but this time he does wonder at the peculiarity, as he basically slept with Sakura in the dream. He would normally mind the awkwardness, then weirdness, then bit after bit forget it, yet something about the dream keeps poking him. It had a weirdly realistic feel to it, but despite that seemed like he was on auto-pilot. During the … act he definitely was. In the beginning, though, there were reasons for what he did, but trying to decipher now the things that got him into the situation is by experience futile. Dream logic.

The wind is picking up, and Sasuke feels his chakra’s hum automatically intensify as well. While his inner temperature is being regulated in swirls the harsh winds bring tears to his eyes. And sometimes dust.

He notices now that he hasn’t dwelt on Konoha’s people in weeks and it comes with a small, clear and hard feeling of relief, like some of those pebbles lodged somewhere they don't belong, now one or two removed. That’s why it does seem peculiar for him to be mentally in that place with those people again.

Something that stands out to him is also the detail the dream possessed. He has dreamt of sex before but only when something reminded him in passing of that fact of life. It’s also not often him who’s having the sex, and if it is, he’s not inside his body like that. The sensations were strange to say the least and the start was alright, he guesses, but especially towards the end he wished it would stop already. He recalls it feeling definitely too slippery and the close vicinity of another human’s naked body was an experience he’d rather not repeat, either. Too much alien skin that’s touching him, as he likes his space.

There's a disturbance he senses and he comes to a halt and looks to the left. A small distance away, a grey-brown fox – well-camouflaged in this landscape – is approaching a cadaver. There are crows that have already started picking at the old meat.

Sasuke wonders why it was Sakura in the dream. He knows he had some very convincing reasoning behind his choice since it motivated him to go through with it, no matter how obscurely hidden this piece of reasoning is to his mind now that it’s awake. He remembers it being there. He normally wouldn’t consider touching Sakura’s naked body with a stick. The last he saw of her is the image of her falling unconscious on the battlefield, right after her second appeal to mattering to him, as if it could work that way.

The thought of her makes him feel cold inside. He brushes it off. He doesn’t want to feel any old bonds to those people, to that place. Bonds of contempt, bonds of care. They are old and fragmented. He keeps brushing them all away.

The greyish fox has made his way to the carcass now, looking for suitable meat. Some of the crows have been startled at first, but now most of them continue picking at their found food, with just one still concentrated on that fox.

He tries to see Itachi’s crows in those scruffy and hungry little things, but the comparison doesn't hold up.

It has been hard to place the impressions of his brother for most of his life. He hopes he’s got the right idea now, slowly leaving older parts of himself behind and finding a future for some new ways to be. Itachi is the one he cares about right now. He doesn’t wonder so much about Naruto these days and … who knows if he will see him again.

The bird that is still alertly checking out the fox’s presence halts some distance from his rear legs while he keeps on tearing at the meager left-overs. After a wicked little run, the crow manages to catch the fox’s tail in its beak. Waiting a moment to observe. Then it pulls.

 


End file.
